Covid

Departing from the usual content I post here, I'm going to record my experience with covid so far as I sit isolated in one room of my apartment in Athens.

Amazingly, I have never had covid until now - at least I never knowingly had covid (and I've always tested if I felt sick or was knowingly exposed). Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 I've always been very careful. I wore masks longer than most people around me. I was among the first to get vaccinated (my state, Maryland, eventually included university professors in the group given priority access to the vaccine before the general public) and have gotten all the boosters that have been available. I've actually lost count of how many covid shots I've gotten: five or six, all Moderna, including most recently the updated booster in September 2023, seven months ago. My son did get covid once, but amazingly my wife (who also has never had covid) and I did not get it from him even though we made no attempt to isolate him from us at home. I actually had started wondering recently whether I'm one of those inexplicably immune people you sometimes read about, since almost every other non-elderly person I know has gotten covid at least once, usually repeatedly. But no, now I know that all along I've had masks and Moderna to thank.

I started feeling symptoms three days ago on the evening of Monday, April 15. I had just returned to Athens earlier that same day from running the Rotterdam Marathon (see my previous post). It's not uncommon for me to get a cold after running a marathon, which is well known to suppress your immune system temporarily. So feeling mild cold symptoms the day after the marathon didn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary. The next morning, Tuesday, April 16, I still felt like I had a head cold, but it was so similar to how I ordinarily feel after marathons that I didn't get around to taking a covid test for several hours after waking up (but I never left my apartment that day). That was when I got the positive test: Tuesday at midday. The line indicating a positive result was super thick and dark, and it showed up immediately. Clearly I was shedding a lot of virus at that point. So I told everybody I'd had recent contact with, and whom I knew how to get in touch with, about my positive test (all of whom are testing negative) and started isolating in one room. It's a very nice room, I must say, and I'm very lucky to have covid here of all places, given that I must have covid at all. I have a balcony with views of the Acropolis and access to fresh air without putting anyone else at risk. I usually wear an N95 mask when I occasionally go elsewhere in the apartment, including to the one of our two bathrooms that only I use while I'm isolating. When my wife leaves and our son is at school, I do open windows and walk around the apartment, mainly to the kitchen, without a mask (and after washing my hands). But she's here most of the time. I'm obviously very fortunate for that too, for her most of all, and that I don't need to take time off work since I'm on sabbatical.

So I flew to Rotterdam on Saturday, April 12, the day before the marathon. Then I ran the marathon on Sunday and obviously felt fine. But I started feeling symptoms the day after that, Monday, after returning to Athens. What I've read suggests that the incubation period for recent strains of covid (this is presumably JN.1) is longer than 2 days. The shortest time I've seen mentioned is 3 days, but usually 4-5 or even longer is mentioned. So my timeline suggests that I did not pick up the virus while traveling to Rotterdam, but rather picked it up in Athens in the days before I left for Rotterdam. If so, then my wife and son were probably exposed then as well, but perhaps only I succumbed to it because only I ran a marathon on Saturday that suppressed my immune system. That seems like the most plausible reconstruction anyway. Another possible explanation (maybe?) is that I did pick it up on the way to Rotterdam and succumbed to it earlier than people normally do because of the marathon. Anyway, I hate to think that I may have exposed others to the virus while traveling back on Monday - apparently you are contagious before developing symptoms. But I'm somewhat reassured by the fact that my wife and son are asymptomatic and testing negative, even though I was in closer contact with them, and for longer, on Monday (as well as Tuesday morning in my wife's case) than I was to any anonymous fellow travelers. 

Here is how my symptoms have progressed so far, and what I've been doing to mollify them. For the first 24 hours my only symptoms were head and nasal congestion, and a mild headache. As I mentioned, this is typical for me in the day or two after marathons. For whatever reason, my body tends to produce a fair amount of mucus (sorry), and an uptick in mucus for me does not necessarily mean that I'm getting sick. The head congestion progressed slightly over those initial 24 hours but remained mild. Then, roughly 24 hours after I first noticed any symptoms, on Tuesday in the late afternoon I started getting chills and feeling cold. Now, I had just run a marathon, so of course my muscles were sore. But I'm pretty sure that I also started feeling body aches not related to the marathon around that same time. Every time I had gotten a shot of the vaccine in the past, I experienced a mild fever and body aches (not only at the injection site) the following day. On Tuesday evening I felt almost exactly the same as I always had after getting a dose of the vaccine, except that the nasal congestion was also still there. When I took my temperature and found that I had a fever of 101F, I instituted the old method I learned as a kid to keep fevers down: I took a fever reducer every 3 hours and 45 minutes, so that a higher fever never had a chance to break out - alternating between aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen so that no one part of my body was affected too much. That night (Tuesday to Wednesday) sucked. I barely slept because I felt alternately cold and hot, plus the head congestion had continued to progress and felt very uncomfortable when I was anything close to horizontal. In other words, it felt like I had the flu that night. So far there weren't really any symptoms or permutations of symptoms to distinguish my case of covid from cases of the flu that we've all experienced before (although for me it's been half a dozen years).

The next morning, Wednesday (roughly 36 hours since the onset of symptoms), I stopped the regimen of fever reducers that I had employed overnight and was happy to discover that my fever did not immediately return. I thought maybe that was it and now I was on the road to recovery. I continued isolating but told my wife that I'd take another covid test on Thursday morning if I remained fever free until then, hoping of course that I'd get a negative result and could stop isolating at that point. But over the course of Wednesday it gradually became clear that my symptoms were simply changing, not abating. Mild chills and body aches did return that afternoon, and temperature regulation was still a problem for me over the following night (Wednesday to Thursday). But I don't think the fever came back, at least nothing more than a very low grade fever. The main change moving into Wednesday evening and night was the onset of a cough. The congestion was moving down, again as it does with the flu. But what was different from any case of the flu or other illness that I've experienced is how thick and viscous the mucus was that was causing the cough (again, sorry, but you did choose to read this far). It felt like glue was clogging up my head and coating the back of my throat. Perhaps that is the explanation for the infamously dry "covid cough." Your cough reflex is constantly triggered because this glue-like phlegm is all over the place, but coughing succeeds at moving absolutely none of it even a millimeter. The usual result of a cough also ensued over the course of that night, which sucked even more than the previous night: a very sore throat. I did take ibuprofen once in the middle of that night in order to try to get some of that inflammation in my throat down, but otherwise I didn't take any more medicine.

On Wednesday I drank a pot of herbal tea and as much water as I could stomach over the course of the day in order to move things along and compensate for all the mucus I was losing (it was still thinner at that point). But when I woke up this morning, Thursday, my body felt ravenous for liquid. I drank a pot of tea first thing along with my coffee, in part to sooth my sore throat. I'm on my second pot of tea now as I write this in the early afternoon, and expect to have a third pot later. Very little of this liquid that I've been pouring into my body today is coming back out again. So copious amounts of herbal tea seems to be the best medicine I've hit upon for at least this stage of my case of covid. I'm also about to take a hot shower to sooth my head and throat with steam. I never thought I'd complain about the wonderfully dry air in Greece, but at this unique moment I for once wouldn't mind a bit more humidity. I've read that for many people covid does not progress linearly, but sometimes symptoms (both particular symptoms and any symptoms at all) may disappear only to return days later. And in rare cases where people experience moderate or severe symptoms (mine are obviously "mild" even though they really suck), often these appear only days after symptoms have remained mild for a while. Of course that's statistically extremely unlikely to happen to me, and presumably my immune system (which is evidently quite strong in normal circumstances) is now back at full strength after being suppressed briefly due to the marathon. But at this point I'm bracing for anything and taking it hour by hour. Nighttime sucks but I feel ok during the day and look forward to being able to go outside and walk around again (with a mask) at some point, when my symptoms have abated and I'm testing negative. Until then my main priority is to avoid giving this thing to my wife or son.

If I don't post about covid again, then it's because there weren't any more weird changes in my symptoms and they improved enough that I either was able to leave this room soon or regained enough brain power to do other things besides write posts like this while in isolation. I hope to be back running, and maybe even posting here about running, relatively soon.

Rotterdam Marathon race report

After setting what remains my marathon PR in Philadelphia in November 2015 just days before my 41st birthday, I lived in Greece during the first half of 2016 with my wife and son while I was on my first sabbatical. I still had a running coach back then, who recommended that I consider doing the Rotterdam Marathon while I was in Europe that Spring. As it happened, I decided instead to register for the Paris Marathon but got injured two weeks beforehand and couldn't run it, although we still went to Paris and had a nice time. But my coach had planted the idea of running Rotterdam in my mind, and the idea was still there when my second sabbatical was approved for this current Spring. I won't cross the Atlantic just to run a race, but living in Athens again this year gave me the opportunity to run Rotterdam without crossing more than a single time zone. So, two days ago on April 14, 2024, I finally ran Rotterdam and finished in 3:10:18, taking five minutes off the times of my previous two marathons. It was the fastest marathon I've run since my 3:09:43 at the Buffalo Marathon in 2019 and my fifth fastest overall after 20 marathons.

To compare apples to apples with my previous post on my previous marathon (Rehoboth), here's my weekly mileage for the 16 weeks leading up to Rotterdam: 40, 40, 31, 45, 32.5, 50, 44.5, 55, 50, 11, 36, 45, 55, 28, 48, 43 (race week including the marathon). Average: 40.9 miles per week. 

That's almost exactly the same as the average of 41.4 miles per week that I ran before Rehoboth. Another similarity is that my training for both races was sidetracked for a couple weeks, but this time it happened much later in the cycle: 6 and 5 weeks before the race, which effectively led to a double peak build-up and a lighter than usual taper.

I think there are four factors that enabled me to run faster in Rotterdam than in Rehoboth. First, Rotterdam is simply a faster course. I haven't run Berlin or Valencia, but it's difficult for me to imagine a significantly faster course than Rotterdam. It's almost completely flat, with the only real elevation coming from a bridge that you run over twice: right after the start, and then from the other direction in mile 17. Plus the crowd support at Rotterdam is absolutely fantastic. I haven't run New York, but I have run Boston and I think the crowds in Rotterdam are at least as strong as at Boston. Names are printed on bibs at Rotterdam, and there was not a mile in the race when random spectators didn't encourage me by name at least once if not many times.

Second, I'm a bit further away from my hamstring injury now. Rehoboth was my first marathon back and I was still proceeding somewhat gingerly in training while doing hamstring exercises 2-3 times per week. But I actually stopped doing hamstring exercises in January when we came to Athens. That wasn't my plan, and in fact I plan to get back to doing them maybe at a lower level now that the race is over. But my hamstring has been fine during this whole build up and during the race. Plus, just having more training under my belt since taking time off with the hamstring tear helps, even if my training had been largely the same.

But in fact my training has differed in a couple ways. The third factor that I think enabled me to run faster is that I did more and better speedwork before Rotterdam than before Reboboth. Again, my hamstring held me back before Rehoboth particularly when it came to speedwork. But after Rehoboth I started doing shorter (400-800 meter) intervals in between threshold runs, and I think largely because of those shorter interval workouts my threshold runs tended to be ~10 seconds per mile faster after Rehoboth than they were before. My plan going forward is to emphasize speedwork over the summer before returning to marathon mode in the Fall, now that it seems my hamstring will let me, both because I miss running fast and because I think a 5k-10k focused block is key to setting yourself up for a good marathon cycle (as long as you also get enough rest). I don't think it's a coincidence that my threshold pace and my marathon race pace improved by roughly the same amount.

Fourth, the most important part of marathon training itself is of course the long run, and I'm a firm believer (sorry, I hate that phrase) that you need to be hitting your goal race pace regularly during long training runs. I just wasn't able to push the pace of long runs much before Rehoboth, but once this latest cycle really got going in early February most of my long runs featured at least some miles at the average pace that I ended up running in Rotterdam (7:16) or faster. The first couple were progression runs, then I did 5 x 2 miles on / 1 mile off with the on paces around 7:00 and off around 8:00. Then, after a couple easy long runs when I got sidetracked for a couple weeks, three weeks before the race I did 22 miles with 8 miles progressing from 7:18 down to 6:57. Even more of this would be better, but doing this sort of thing at all put me in a different league of fitness than I was in for Rehoboth.

During my last hard long runs it seemed that the sweet spot was somewhere around 7:10-15 pace. I could run sub-7:10 at the end of long runs but it would cause my heart rate to increase too much, which means that I wouldn't be able to sustain it in an actual marathon. So I went into the race thinking of 7:10 as a kind of speed limit at least during the first half. I planned to go out at 7:13 average, which is 3:10 pace minus a couple seconds per mile to correct for overdistance. My A goal was to beat my 3:09:43 at Buffalo in 2019,  if I could pick it up a little in the second half. My B goal was to run 3:10, if I could just hang onto an even split. I didn't really think much about what to aim for next if 3:10 slipped away, but I definitely wasn't going to be happy unless I ran a good bit faster than 3:15.

Here is how the race transpired according to the mile splits recorded by my watch (which differ slightly from Strava):

Mile 1 - 7:05

Mile 2 - 7:10

Mile 3 - 7:10

Mile 4 - 7:13

Mile 5 - 7:10

Mile 6 - 7:10

Mile 7 - 7:12

Mile 8 - 7:10

Mile 9 - 7:07

Mile 10 - 7:09

Mile 11 - 7:06

Mile 12 - 7:07

Mile 13 - 7:12

Mile 14 - 7:08

Mile 15 - 7:08

Mile 16 - 7:13

Mile 17 - 7:18 (includes bridge)

Mile 18 - 7:09

Mile 19 - 7:15

Mile 20 - 7:12

Mile 21 - 7:10

Mile 22 - 7:15

Mile 23 - 7:24

Mile 24 - 7:35

Mile 25 - 7:29

Mile 26 - 7:29

Final .36 - 7:13

Finish - 3:10:18

As I mentioned, you cross a bridge right after the start in mile one, which takes you up and then down. I realized when coasting down the back side of the bridge that I had run up the front half a bit too fast. But no worries. After that I settled comfortably back to between 7:10 and 7:13 through 8 miles. I felt good and this was easy, as of course the first third of a marathon should be.

Then you can see that I picked it up a notch for the next 7 miles or so. Initially, I think the enthusiastic crowds just carried me a hair faster. But I was still feeling great and started thinking this might be a good day. Just as I was telling myself to stick to my plan through halfway, though, during mile 10 I was surprisingly passed by the 3:10 pacers. I knew they were running too fast and was telling some of the people following them that they were actually running 3:08 pace. But I figured that since I was feeling good I could afford to run along with them just a few seconds faster than my planned pace. Sure enough, I hit halfway in 1:34:03 (and I was well behind the 3:10 pacers at that point). The pacers briefly slowed down at halfway but then resumed their 3:07-8 pace. I felt so good through 15 or 16 miles that I had to talk myself into not running even faster until after 20 miles.

But it got harder before I reached 20 miles. The 3:10 pace group seemed to fall apart on the bridge in mile 17. I don't know what happened to the two pacers at the front of the group, but I never saw them again after the bridge. It turned out that there was another, smarter 3:10 pacer further back, who I saw going up the front end of the bridge. But then I pushed ahead down the back end of the bridge and didn't see that pacer again until the final kilometer of the race, when he passed me with a tiny handful of runners in tow. At that point I thought I was probably still going to finish under 3:10 and didn't worry about trying to stick with this little group.

The five miles after the bridge and before my pace slipped (18-22) felt harder and erased any idea of speeding up. But I still thought I could hold on and finish around 3:08-9, or maybe even 3:07 if I could somehow summon a kick at the end. Alas, it was not to be, though. The familiar marathon fade finally hit me in mile 23, and from then on it took everything I had just to continue running at all. I actually didn't slow down that much - less, in fact, than I did in Buffalo, where my fade occurred over 5 miles and peaked at 7:56 in mile 25. I haven't gone back and looked at the splits of every marathon I've run, but I may have faded less at Rotterdam than in any other marathon except my PR race, which is the only marathon I've managed to negative split. So I'm not kicking myself over it. I hung in there and ran 3:10. Beating my Buffalo time by running only 36 seconds faster really would have amounted to hitting it out of the park that day.

I can't think of anything to criticize about the Rotterdam Marathon, except maybe that like some other European races it started at 10:00am. Why such a late start? Otherwise, some other races might be as good in their own ways, but you really can't get much better than this. By the way, flying into Amsterdam and taking a train down to Rotterdam is super easy and fast. Ask me about it for details. I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Rotterdam - Central Station, which is right by the finish line. The start line is a mile or so away, but I was definitely happy to see my hotel right after crossing the finish line.

2023 Rehoboth Marathon race report

I guess I didn't feel much like updating this blog after my previous post in August. But for most of the previous several months I've been able to train and did in fact run the Rehoboth Marathon on December 2 - my first marathon since coming back from my hamstring tear. My goal was mainly just to make it to the start and finish lines, but I also hoped to run faster than I did in my previous marathon, the Shamrock Marathon in 2022 (3:15:34), which I ran on limited training after recovering from an earlier (and less significant) injury. I succeeded, running 3:15:01 (7:27/mile average pace) in Rehoboth on what is certainly a slower course than Shamrock. My hamstring tightened up a bit the last few miles, but otherwise it didn't give me trouble.

I won't give all the details of my training here. But here's my weekly mileage for the 16 weeks leading up to Rehoboth, beginning immediately after my last post: 35, 51, 54, 55, 21, 10, 33, 35, 35, 45, 50, 55, 60, 45, 37, 42 (race week including the marathon). Average: 41.4 miles per week.

The reason for the dip in mileage after the first few weeks was that I injured my back doing exercises to strengthen my recovering hamstring. All year I've been doing such exercises 2-3 times per week, and many hamstring exercises are effectively also lower back exercises. I think it was single leg Romanian deadlifts with a dumbbell, one of my staple exercises up to this point, that somehow tweaked something in my lower back. It was very uncomfortable for about a month, but eventually it recovered and I still had time to get the long runs and weekly volume up to a pretty good level before tapering. I stopped doing all single leg exercises after that back injury (but continued doing other exercises 2-3 times per week once my back recovered). I plan to experiment with new hamstring/back exercises going forward. 

Workout-wise, I basically just did some strides, threshold intervals, and a long run each week, in addition to easy/recovery runs (and always at least one day off). The threshold intervals of course got progressively longer over time, both in the sense that individual intervals got progressively longer and in the sense that I spent more total time at threshold pace per workout. They culminated in a 3 x 2 mile threshold workout two and a half weeks before Rehoboth, and then a 5 mile Turkey Trot probably a bit under my current threshold (6:27 pace) a week and a half before Rehoboth. Long runs ascended to a peak of 22 miles before immediately tapering. I didn't really do specific pace work during long runs but tried to run vaguely marathon effort during the second half of some of the longer ones. 

Going into the marathon, I thought optimistically that I might be somewhere around 3:10 shape. So, I planned on going out at 7:15 mile pace and seeing how that felt. I figured that on a good day I might be able to speed up a tiny bit later on, but realistically not much. So I was thinking 3:08 would be the absolute best time possible for me that day if everything went better than expected. 3:10-11 was the more plausible goal if I could just more or less hold 7:15 pace the whole time. But I at least wanted to run faster than I did at Shamrock. I was happy just to be running a marathon again and couldn't be disappointed with any time faster than my previous marathon.

I knew that nearly half of the Rehoboth course is off road, and I had never before run a marathon that was not entirely on roads. (This was my 19th marathon start and 18th finish). But I didn't really know what to expect from the off road sections of the course. I'd heard the course was flat, but how was the footing on the off road sections? Would they be super soft or muddy since it had rained the previous day? I wore the Nike Vaporfly Next%2, hoping that they would work well enough on the off road sections, since they're  my current choice for road races.

The first 4 miles or so of the course are on roads and boardwalk. I felt good and ended up running these miles around 7:05 pace, faster than planned, but I was comfortable. I then eased back to around my planned 7:15 pace for the rest of the first half. My watch said 1:35:32 at halfway, but that includes around a minute spent standing still in mile 8 trying to get a rock out of my shoe. 

The first off road section was around miles 5-8. The surface was pretty hard packed and didn't have any larger rocks or mud. There were also some extended sections of boardwalk. So the footing wasn't bad, but what surprised me about this section was that it was not totally flat. Much of it was rolling. The rolling terrain and softer surfaces took much more out of me than the asphalt sections before and after it. I was running around 10 seconds per mile slower than I had been on asphalt in the first four miles, but I was working harder. Then, running the same pace on asphalt in miles 8-13 or so was considerably easier.

The second off road section is around miles 14-17. It's actually the same as the first off road section but run in the opposite direction. Here I slowed down into the 7:20s and started feeling like I didn't know whether I could even maintain that pace all the way to the end. Again it was the rolling terrain more than the soft surfaces that I think slowed me down.

Miles 18-20 or so are back on the road, and then there's a different off road section in miles 21-25. This off road section is less rolling (but still slightly so) but was both rockier and muddier. It's also more crowded, or was for me, because marathoners and half marathoners share this part of the course. So, I was running more or less the same pace as some marathoners, as before, and we were continually passing slower half marathoners. It's an out and back section too, so both sets of runners are going both directions on a relatively narrow trail. I really did not like this part of the course. I gradually slowed down through the 7:30s and eventually struggled to run no slower than 7:40. For probably the last 3 miles my hamstring started sending me occasional warning signals, probably because my lower back had tightened up and forced me into anterior pelvic tilt, which lengthens the hamstrings. So, by that point I just wanted to finish without hurting anything.

I was able to speed back up a bit to 7:27 pace for mile 26 on the road, and then a little more for the last bit before the finish. I was trying to speed up just enough to sneak under 3:15 while aggravating my hamstring as little as possible, but I ended up missing it by a couple seconds. I didn't care, though, since I'm happy to have run faster than my previous marathon. I don't think I was wrong about being somewhere around 3:10 shape on a flat, road course in the same weather. Maybe 3:12 or 3:13 at the slowest. By the way, the temperature was in the upper 50s. It was humid and cloudy. There was some wind but not too much and it didn't bother me. It was a bit warmer and more humid than ideal, but in comparison to all my other marathons I'd classify this as closer to good weather than bad.

So, I think I ran well enough and I'm happy with how my race went given the course and where I'm at right now. But frankly I wasn't a fan of the course. I don't understand why people I've talked to describe Rehoboth as a fast course. It's not the slowest marathon course out there, but it's definitely not a fast course. And the off road sections make it quite unique - to my taste, not in a good way. The other thing people always say about Rehoboth is that the after party is great. You get free food and three free beers, although there isn't room for everyone to sit down. I was amazed to see runners lined up to get into the after party immediately after crossing the finish line. Later I saw videos on social media of people at the after party doing the limbo to loud music with medals around their necks. To each his or her own, but that's about as far away as possible from what I want to be doing immediately after running a marathon, and I certainly didn't want to stand in a long line waiting to get into that sort of scene. (I skipped the after party). So, I'm glad I ran Rehoboth and enjoyed many aspects of it, but it isn't really my cup of tea and I don't plan to go back.

Next up for me is an extended trip to Greece for the first half of 2024. I plan to run a Spring marathon in Europe, but right now that's TBD. Who knows, maybe I'll post running updates here? I'll return to the US in midsummer, and I've registered for the Richmond Marathon next Fall. At the moment I'm thinking of giving Boston another try in 2025. (I was registered but had to miss it this year because of my hamstring injury). By then I'll be 50, so the qualifying times get easier and even my Rehoboth time should easily get me in. As usual, though, all such plans depend on staying healthy.

Back at it

My effort to restart this running blog last summer was in good faith, but I got injured a few weeks after my last post. It was my most serious running injury to date, which means I've been quite lucky given all I've put my body through. On October 19, 2022, I felt some tightness in what I thought was my right glute as I finished up a standard fartlek workout. I then stretched a bit and did a cool down jog back home. I was training for the Rehoboth Beach Seashore Marathon at the beginning of December but knew I needed to take some time to let whatever this was recover. For the next two and a half weeks, I only went on a few short jogs of 2-3 miles to check on things and spent a lot of time at the PT and chiropractor and doing the exercises and stuff they assigned me. Eventually I decided that whatever it was - I still didn't really know what had happened - was ok enough and started easing my way back into running in hopes of maybe still doing Rehoboth but mainly looking toward the Boston Marathon in the Spring, which I had just registered for. I still thought I had strained something or other, probably several things, in my glute. The PTs were giving me lots of glute exercises, sticking pins in my butt, and telling me to roll out my glutes a lot. But they also said my hamstring was involved, because it attaches up there in the area where the allegedly strained glute muscles criss-cross. At a certain point, as I was getting back into running in mid-November, I started thinking it odd that they didn't give me any hamstring exercises along with all the glute stuff, so I added in some hamstring exercises of my own. I told the PTs about this, and they said good idea. The exercise I added was hamstring curls using a swiss ball. At first I used both legs at the same time, but soon I was doing single leg hamstring curls with the swiss ball. I keep meticulous logs, which indicate that I did the single-leg curls on three occasions. Jumping to the punchline: I think what happened on October 19 was that (perhaps among other things) a small tear formed in my proximal hamstring tendon, which is way up under the glute max in the hip area. Over the next few weeks it started to heal a bit, but then each time I did those single leg hamstring curls I tore it a bit more. In the second half of November I started getting more and more pain at my sit bone on the right side. Eventually I could barely tolerate sitting down and spent all my time either standing or lying down. Running became impossible. My last run was on December 3, the day of the Rehoboth marathon (which I did not try to run). A bit after that I stopped going to the PT and instead went to my primary care physician, who ordered an MRI. It hurt all the time and I was having trouble concentrating on anything. On December 21 I finally got the MRI, which showed proximal hamstring tendinosis with high-grade partial tearing. I was later told by a different doctor who did an ultrasound that I had roughly a 50% tear in my right hamstring tendon.

I probably had tendinosis up there for years without realizing it. All the PTs and the chiropractor I went to didn't catch it. Hamstring strengthening exercises could have stopped it progressing, but I didn't know and never did them. Eventually the tendon degraded enough that an ordinary workout was enough to tear it a bit. Even if I hadn't torn it more by doing an exercise that was too aggressive (which is what I think happened), it would not have gotten better on its own and would have just torn again from something else without a proper strengthening program. So the silver lining is that the painful tear got my attention and led me to get the MRI. Now I know what the problem is, and it isn't anything to do with glutes. When I posted my MRI result on Strava, lots of other runners told me they had dealt with this sort of injury. I asked them all how they dealt with it and got lots of helpful advice. I wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible, and I figured the way to do that was to start with absolute rest for as long as necessary, and then very, very patiently to follow a rehab protocol - which these days you can easily find online and do yourself if you have some experience and access to the relevant equipment. (I was no longer in the mood to trust PTs). I ended up taking around 6 weeks of absolute rest. The area mostly stopped hurting over the first 2 weeks or so, after which I began doing some slow walking, which gradually became more comfortable over the next couple weeks. When I judged that no further improvement was forthcoming from rest and slow walking, on January 18 I began following the rehab protocol I had decided upon after reading and watching practically everything on the internet about this injury. I also started walking a bit faster and later introduced some run-walking until I worked up to a continuous run of 3 miles on February 4. The exercise protocol I followed was solid. For good measure (and to keep myself from going crazy) I also did a lot of strengthening of other muscles, including upper body stuff (which may have contributed to some of the weight I gained during this period). Unfortunately I overlooked calves, though, and by the time I noticed this oversight it was too late. My hamstring held strong, but a few weeks into my return to running I strained my soleus, which had atrophied from all that rest. This too may have been a blessing in disguise, because I had been so surprised by my hamstring's progress that I started thinking I could run Boston after all. The previous year I had taken a month totally off after straining the same calf and then ran Shamrock 10 weeks after I started running again, and Boston was also around 10 weeks after I started running again this time around. But it was not to be, and frankly I wasn't too disappointed. I had gotten a bit ahead of myself anyway. The calf strain dragged on frustratingly long, but it gave me more time to strengthen my hamstring and shifted my focus away from the next race to just getting back into healthy training. 

It was May by the time my calf finally chilled out. Since then I've gradually worked my way back into things. In the past I had always done hill repeats to prepare my muscles for workouts, but my hamstring needed to avoid hills at first. I still don't do hill repeats, but last month I was finally able to do some harder runs over hilly terrain in Greece. When I returned to the US, I did a couple club races, a 5k and an 8k, for the first time since the injury. I'm predictably slower and still getting back into shape, but my muscles are holding up. I continue to do hamstring exercises 2-3 times per week. When I reached the milestone of 50 miles per week for the past two weeks, I figured it was time to resuscitate this running blog. Daily details for those two weeks are below.

My plan from here is basically to continue returning to the sort of training and racing I love. Last year I deferred my registrations for both the Annapolis Ten Miler in late August and the Rehoboth Marathon in early December. So I plan to run both of those this year, as well as the Army Ten Miler as usual. I'm thinking of the A10 in two weeks as sort of the next hard training effort after the 5k and 8k club races. After that I'll shift more fully into marathon mode with longer workouts and some pace work during long runs. I hope to race the ATM in October and not just treat that as another hard training effort, but we'll see how things go.

Before tearing my hamstring, I felt like my running was kind of on autopilot for a while. I set some PRs in 2019 but then the pandemic happened and for some reason my heart wasn't altogether in it when things opened back up again. I was going through the motions but didn't really know why or care much. But getting injured and thinking I might never be able to run again put some fire in my belly. I generally need to hold myself back since I'm the sort who will simply run myself into the ground, and my body already has a lot of wear and tear on it. But it's wonderful to feel that drive and love running again. I don't have to do this or that workout today. I get to go out and run now, and it's glorious. I want to run as fast and far as my body will let me. I'm thankful for what my body can do and accept its limits, but I'm going to push them, still.

July 31 - August 6:
Mo: 5 miles
Tu: 8.5 miles with 10 x .25 miles (1:15 rests)
We: 6.5 miles
Th: 14 miles @ 7:49/mi.
Fr: Off
Sa: 6.5 miles
Su: Steve Thompson 8k in 34:38
Week total: 50 miles

August 7-13:
Mo: 5.5 miles
Tu: 6.5 miles
We: 10 miles with 3 x (1, 2, 3 min.) with equal recoveries
Th: 7 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 15 miles @ 7:54/mi.
Su: Off
Week total: 50 miles

It's Fall!

My weekly mileage for the last 6 weeks, since I started running again after taking two weeks off for a knee injury in the first half of August, has been: 14, 35, 42.5, 50, 55, 60. (Before my knee injury I was running 45-55 weekly miles consistently). So I have built my weekly volume back up to where it was and am now increasing it further. This past week was my first 60 mile week in a year, and I don't plan to stop there. The plan for next week is (surprise!) 65 miles, and then I might take a down week heading into the Army Ten Miler on October 9. If all goes well, I hope to go higher after the ATM. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Last weekend I also got my first taste in a while of what at least used to be my marathon pace. I had registered for the DC Half before injuring my knee and had intended to put in at least a race effort, expecting that the weather would probably not permit fast times. But a hard race effort so soon after my knee injury was out of the question. So instead I set out to run 3:00 marathon pace (6:50/mi.) for at least 8 miles, which I figured wouldn't be so hard, and maybe I'd hold the pace further or even speed up after that if I felt good. Well, those 8 miles (which I ended up running a tad faster than 3:00 pace) felt plenty hard, so I shut it down after that and just ran easy the rest of the way. My knee actually hurt a bit after the race for the first time in weeks, but I didn't notice it while running and it was fine a few days later. My coach, back when I had one, used to give me 10 miles at MP to kick off marathon training around 12 weeks out (the DC Half was 11 weeks out), and every single time that workout turned out to be much harder than I expected going into it. How on earth is this my marathon pace? Last weekend was no different, although now of course it's even less clear that upper 6:40s is a feasible marathon pace for me anymore. I'll give it a go anyway and adjust later to whatever the reality turns out to be. The weather dramatically improved a few days after the DC Half bang on the Fall equinox, so now (and at least for as long as this autumnal weather holds) running any given pace is easier than it was just recently. That'll help a lot. This is a major reason why I decided to run Rehoboth in early December: so that not only the race itself but also the hardest part of the training is in cooler weather. I hate summer weather and look forward to Fall and Winter at every moment during the rest of the year. And I look forward especially to running in it. If I can stay injury free, then I'll be doing plenty of that.

September 12-18:
Mo: 6.5 miles with 6 strides
Tu: 7 miles
We: 3 x 1 mile (2:00 jogs) in 6:25, 6:18, 6:10
Th: 7 miles
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: 2 miles
Su: 17 miles with 8 miles in the high 6:40s at the DC Half
Week total: 55 miles

September 19-25:
Mo: 5 miles
Tu: 8 miles
We: 10 x .25 miles (1:00 rests)
Th: 8 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 20 miles @ 7:35/mi.
Su: 2 miles
Week total: 60 miles

A knee injury and recovery

I took an unplanned break from running for two weeks in Greece with a knee injury. After I returned to the US and was able to run again, I went to my usual doctor for all things running related, the guru Josh Bross, who said I must have strained my VMO. I'm not sure how that happened, but at the time I had noticed some medial hamstring tightness, which Dr. Bross said could have made my VMO work harder. I suspect the primary cause was that we do a lot more walking in Athens than elsewhere, and the sudden increase in walking (the injury happened after about a week in Athens) on top of my usual running was just a bit too much for my aging legs. In the future I need to turn down the running at the beginning of trips to Athens to give my legs a chance to adapt to the increased overall step count. Anyway, the medial side of my knee hurt for several weeks and made even walking difficult during that time. My knee cap wasn't tracking correctly and would click, sometimes painfully, with almost every step. Eventually it improved a bit and we were able to do some hiking. Then, in the third week of August, I was able to start doing very short jogs every other day or so. I worked up to a 9 mile run on our last full day in Greece, August 24, and then joined the DC Road Runners SLR horde for a 12 mile run on Saturday, August 27. That last full week of August I ran 35 miles, slower than usual but without knee pain. Obviously I wasn't able to race the Annapolis 10 Miler on August 28 as I had planned, but it turns out I could defer my race entry until next year. Below is a summary of the next two weeks, which is to say the past two weeks. I've ramped the mileage back up pretty steeply in hopes of being able to handle running the DC Half next weekend on September 18. I won't be fit to race it but hope to use the race, weather permitting, as an introduction to marathon goal pace or at least marathon effort, since I'm now 12 weeks away from the Rehoboth Beach Seashore Marathon, which is my primary goal race this Fall. I did manage to get a spot in the Army Ten Miler, which is still far enough away that I'm holding out hope to be fit enough to put in a race effort there. Later on, I'll probably also do the Veteran's Day 10k (November 6) and the Rothman 8k in Philadelphia (November 19) as tune-ups. Thinking even further out, this coming week registration opens for the 2023 Boston Marathon. I ran Boston in 2015 and enjoyed it, but since then I usually complain about groupie marathoners who return to Boston every year and wear BAA jackets around (unless they have some actual connection to the city of Boston), and about the resulting lack of alternative Spring marathons to run. I usually prefer to do other Spring marathons instead where they exist, like Shamrock last year and Buffalo in 2019 (both great races). I've had my eye on the relatively local Salisbury Marathon since it started a few years ago and had assumed it would be next on my list. But I find myself seriously entertaining the idea of returning to Boston in 2023 instead. I like small and medium sized races, but I also like doing big races occasionally, and I guess I'm feeling like it's time for a big marathon next year. Unfortunately, in the US, there is only one big, exciting Spring marathon, and when I get past complaining about that fact I remember that it is indeed a magical event. So I'm leaning toward "applying" to run Boston. It's unclear whether my 3:15:34 at Shamrock is good enough to get me a spot. The current qualifying time for men 45-49 is 3:20, so I would need the cut off time to be 4:26 or less. But if it's not, then I can run Salisbury and do a big race next Fall. That's my thinking right now anyway.

August 29 - September 4:
Mo: 6 x 200m
Tu: 5 miles
We: 3 mile moderate tempo @ 6:43/mi. 
Th: 5 miles
Fr: 5 miles
Sa: 14.5 miles @ 7:55/mi.
Su: off
Week total: 42.5 miles

September 5 - 11:
Mo: 5.5 miles with 4 strides
Tu: 6 miles
We: 3 mile tempo @ 6:21/mi.
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 17 miles @ 7:53/mi.
Su: 2 miles
Week total: 50 miles

Hot runner summer

After running 55 miles for two weeks in a row, my highest volume for some time, I started the first of these two weeks with a longer fartlek than I've been doing lately. It felt hard, and of course it's hot and humid now. So I decided the next day to take a down week by moving my long run to Monday of the following week and taking Friday off. I then ended up taking off the following Friday as well because my hamstring was a bit tight (possibly from some supplementary exercises I did on Wednesday afternoon). So both of these weeks ended up smaller than the previous two. But the quality was good, especially given the challenging weather conditions. The long run on July 18 went particularly well considering that the TDP (temperature + dew point) was over 150, and I managed to do both a workout and the College Park Parkrun 5k each week as well. I'm evidently pretty locked in to 19:3x for a threshold effort 5k in summery weather right now, which is also pretty much where I was in 2019 (my last good running year). I was hoping to put in a harder effort and try to sneak under 19 minutes before heading to Greece, but frankly I'm just trying to survive the summer weather at this point. So I'll defer that hope until September and continue also to wonder whether I can get under 18:30 when the weather begins to improve in the Fall (if that sort of effort is even compatible with the longer distance training I'll be focusing on then). That would be my fastest 5k in nearly a decade. After PRing in both the half marathon and 10 mile in 2019, I set out in the Spring of 2020 to see how close my old body could get to my 5k and 10k PRs, both of which date back to 2013, before the pandemic shut everything down. That's still in the back of my mind, but right now I need to shift toward strength work in advance of the Annapolis 10 miler on August 28 and the DC Half on September 18. I'd love to do the Army 10 miler as well but neglected to register before it filled up. Maybe I'll somehow manage to get a bib, but actually I'd be better positioned to take some swings at the 5k then if I don't. We'll see.

July 11 - 17:
Mo: off
Tu: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 minutes with half recoveries
We: 8.3 miles
Th: 8.5 miles
Fr: off
Sa: College Park Parkrun 5k in 19:31
Su: 8.4 miles
Week total: 45 miles

July 18 - 24:
Mo: 16 miles @ 7:48/mi.
Tu: off
We: 3 x (3, 2, 1 min.) with half recoveries
Th: 8.5 miles
Fr: off
Sa: College Park Parkrun 5k in 19:34
Su: 8.5 miles
Week total: 50 miles

Another 55 mile week

I skipped the Parkrun again this week, this time because of heavy rain. But my back is doing well, and I managed to run 55 miles again this week in spite of some scheduling challenges. I'm now feeling the slightly higher volume since this is the highest consistent mileage I've run in two years. My weight is even beginning to drop back in the direct of pre-pandemic levels, which had been stable for around 8 years until late 2020 - not that I'm losing weight on purpose. I just unavoidably slim down when I run more miles, especially in the summer. It would make sense to take a down week around now, but I have two more weeks in the US before heading to Greece. So I'm hoping to keep it going for another two weeks if the body plays along, and then take things easier that first week in Athens. We'll see how things go, but I've penciled in 60 miles for next week including a fartlek on Tuesday and the Parkrun on Saturday.

July 4 - 10:
Mo: 8 miles
Tu: off
We: 10 x .25 miles with 1:00 rests
Th: 8 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 16 miles @ 7:43
Su: 7 miles
Week total: 55 miles

Working through some lower back issues

The injury cycle I mentioned in my previous post included, among other things, some lower back issues that impacted much more than just my running. Unfortunately a bit of that returned last week, but fortunately it was not nearly as bad as before and at this point I have it under control. My torso is very long compared with the length of my legs. I'm 5'10", my dad is 6'1", my mom is 5'0", and I joke that I inherited my dad's torso with my mom's legs. I'm not built like a runner at all. I've had lower back problems since my early teens, when I first hurt myself lifting weights with bad form (it happened other times later as well). But I think the lower back issues I've had as an adult are mostly or entirely related to poor posture, aided perhaps by my odd proportions. My chiropractor tells me I have a curve in my spine that is not supposed to be there (front-to-back, not left-to-right as in scoliosis). When my back locks up it does seem to be in the area where that unwelcome curve is located. I have a gadget called a posture pump disk hydrator that I use to straighten up that curve and coax those muscles to loosen up, or to discourage them from locking up in the first place, and you can do basically the same thing with a foam roller. Anyway, my back tightened up on me last week on Friday (June 24), the day after a long run. I don't think it's caused by running, but rather my posture tends to be especially bad when I'm tired after some long or hard runs. When my back locks up, running can initially help to loosen things up. So I did an easy run after waking up with it tight on Friday. Then on Saturday I planned to run easy again at the Parkrun but ended up running at tempo effort for 5k. That was probably dumb, but it's difficult to restrain myself when running with others who are putting in effort. I took the following day, Sunday, off as penance. Over the next couple days, on each of which I ran easy, my back loosened up enough that I was able to hazard a workout on Wednesday. It felt almost normal before the workout but did tighten up again somewhat afterwards. So I did a recovery run the following day and then took another day off. By Saturday, July 2, it felt pretty much fine again, but I didn't want to risk it tightening up from running faster. So I skipped the Parkrun that weekend but did a long run on Sunday. I'm writing this the day after that long run, and my back is still fine. In spite of these back issues I was able to run 55 miles this past week, which is my highest weekly volume yet this year. Assuming my back cooperates, I'm planing to keep it there or inch upward very slightly next week and to return to the Parkrun next Saturday.

 June 20-26:
Mo: off
Tu: 3 x (3, 2, 1 min.) with half recoveries
We: 7.5 miles
Th: 16 miles @ 7:34/mi.
Fr: 7.5 miles
Sa: College Park Parkrun 5k in 20:07 (6:35/mi. pace)
Su: off
Week total: 47.7 miles

June 27 - July 3:
Mo: 7.5 miles
Tu: 8 miles
We: 3 x (1, 2, 3 min.) with half recoveries
Th: 7.5 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 8 miles
Su: 15 miles @ 7:39/mi.
Week total: 55 miles

Let's try this again

Hi there! It's been a while. Since my last post more than two and a half years ago, a lot of things have happened which cannot be summed up on a running blog. The pandemic has been rough on all of us, but on some more than others. I have been fortunate in most important respects. None of my close family members or friends died or suffered severe cases of Covid, and I myself never knowingly got it (still!) or at least never had symptoms. But my running has of course regressed over the past couple years at least partly as a result of the pandemic, and I'm also not getting any younger (I'm now 47). In addition to the general lack of motivation to train without any races to train for, I fell into an injury cycle that lasted over a year. Hopefully that is behind me now. I've been running consistently again since the beginning of 2022 leading up to the Shamrock Marathon in March. My goal at Shamrock was just to cover the marathon distance at whatever pace I could manage, which turned out to be a 7:28 average pace for a 3:15 marathon. That's better than I expected, especially since I had only been running for 10 weeks and only two of those weeks were over 40 miles. Since then I've been gradually reintroducing speedwork and slowly increasing overall volume. In the past month I strung together three consecutive 50 mile weeks before taking a 40 mile down week, usually with one speed workout per week. I've also run three 5ks in the past two months to gauge the progress of my speedwork (not much yet!) and to give me short term goals to focus on. I hope to turn the screws a bit in the next month or so by doing a 5k on the weekends and also a speed workout during the week, at least most weeks. We'll see how that goes. My goal for the summer is to get some speed back and to adapt to a consistent training schedule with volume at the sort of level where I can handle more serious training for longer races in the Fall, eventually leading up to the Rehoboth Seashore Marathon in early December. In late July we'll head back to Greece for the first time in three years! I'm really looking forward to that and will try to post some photos here as well as on Strava, etc. Then I plan to return to the Annapolis 10 Miler on August 28 to close out the summer and shift towards longer distance races in the Fall. Mostly for the sake of accountability and to force me to think about the overall coherence of my training, I'll try to return to posting weekly training summaries here. 

A fishy PR

In my previous post four and a half months ago (what a blogger I am!), I congratulated myself for setting a half-marathon PR at the end of March, which was my first non-marathon PR since 2013 and my first PR at any distance since 2015; I wrote about finally managing to run an ok marathon again at Buffalo in May; and I wondered whether my body is still up to the sort of training I'd need to do to seriously target another sub-3:00 marathon this Fall.

Since then I've made some pretty significant changes, or rather I've reverted to some old ways of mine from many years past, and so far I'm having good results. It's not to do with the MRI or PT exercises I mentioned in my last post. I did get the MRI, which sure enough showed all kinds of gnarly stuff in my lower back. But afterwards my doctor repeated what he told me when I asked him for the referral: at my age (44) almost everyone has lots of gnarly stuff in their lower back that will show up on an MRI, but my level of activity is such that none of it warrants pursuing any of the available treatment options, almost all of which are very invasive. So that was a dead end. I also completely stopped doing any supplementary exercises after concluding that I spend enough time running as it is and they weren't helping anyway. But I did not give up on the goal of solving the muscle tightness problem that I've been complaining about for some time. It had gotten bad enough that I decided to try something that for me was more drastic than any attempted solution I had yet considered: I started eating fish again after seven years as a vegetarian. For some time I wondered whether my problem was nutritional, so I tried making various dietary adjustments consistent with my then-vegetarianism, such as eating more plant-based protein, adding more ground flax seed and Udo's Oil to my food, and taking regular B-complex and iron supplements. Yet the increasing muscle tightness and difficulty recovering from workouts continued. Of course it could simply have been aging, but eventually I decided that I needed to find out whether eating fish again would make any difference. This was a difficult decision for me, because I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but I've always thought it (ethically) better not to eat meat only if a vegetarian diet can be at least as healthy as a non-vegetarian diet. I still believe it can be, at least for some people, perhaps including me again at some point. But it is impossible to deny that since I started eating fish again this summer my recent muscle tightness and recovery problems have basically vanished. I don't mean, of course, that my muscles never get tight anymore or that I don't need any recovery time after workouts. But these are no longer anything close to the problems they had recently become. For the first time in years, I can do two shorter workouts during the week (usually a short tempo run and some intervals) instead of one (or the other), because I don't need several days to recover from each workout anymore. And I don't just recover well enough from a workout to get through the next one - I feel stronger and run better after recovering from workouts (which happens faster) because my body is actually absorbing the training now. It sounds silly, but I had almost forgotten how it feels to benefit from workouts instead of just doing them as some kind of end in itself. On the weekends, I can also pick up the pace on long runs again and even do long, 10+ mile tempos without my hip muscles locking up. I don't know whether it's because I digest protein from animal meat better (than even whey protein, which is also animal based), whether I needed an animal source of omega-3 (which you can get from supplements without actually eating meat), or what is making the difference. Nor, strictly speaking, do I know whether my vegetarian diet caused the problems I had been experiencing in the first place. But I do know that eating fish again is helping - a lot - to solve them.

So eating fish again is the biggest of the changes I've made lately, and I think it has made it possible for me to handle and benefit from the other changes, which are changes in my training. I already mentioned in my previous post that I intended to start trying to do faster interval workouts in order to improve my speed. Almost every week for a few months now I've been doing this: usually 12 x 400m or 10 x 500m with 1:00 or 1:15 recoveries. I run these intervals at a pace that averages in the high 5:30s, which is faster than my 5k PR pace (5:47) and much faster than I've run a 5k for years. Most weeks I also do a 3 mile, 4 mile, or 2 x 2 mile tempo run, which lately have gotten down below 6:10 average pace. In addition to those two types of workouts, which I usually do on Tuesdays (tempos) and Thursdays (intervals), on weekends I not only have been doing a lot of marathon pace work during long runs, but I've also squeezed down my marathon pace in training to the low 6:40s or high 6:30s. I've done a 10 mile tempo, a 12 mile tempo, 2 x 4 miles, and several long runs with sections of push miles in that pace range over the last couple of months. Any one of these variables - more frequent workouts in general, more intervals in particular, faster intervals, faster short tempos, more marathon pace running, a faster marathon pace - would mark a significant change for the better in my training. But all of them are happening at the same time. Once again I very much doubt that any of this, let alone all of it, would be possible if I weren't eating fish again.

Intervals are improving my hip extension

Since Buffalo I've run several summer club races, which were fun but hot and slow, and two 10 mile races. Near the end of August I ran the Annapolis Ten Miler in 1:06:35. It was my first time running that race and apparently the weather (in late August!) was better than anyone can remember. But all the hills were still there, and it's not a fast course. I ran well, though, and was pleased with how strong I felt on the hills after a shorter than usual stint of training in hilly Greece this summer. But the improvements in my training that I mentioned above really got going after the A10. My first opportunity to put them to use in a race was at the Army Ten Miler last weekend (on October 13). Again we had great weather, and the ATM course is fast. In 2013 I ran 1:02:49 (6:17 pace) at the ATM, which was my 10 mile PR until last weekend. Because my weekly short tempo runs have gotten down to 1:01 flat 10 mile pace (6:06) lately, I knew I was in PR shape. But I haven't been doing longer lactate threshold workouts, because my current schedule gives me only one recovery day between tempo and interval workouts, and I don't want to get too worn out on tempo day. Not really knowing what sort of pace I'd be able to handle in the latter part of a 10 mile race, I decided to aim for sub-1:02 (sub-6:12 pace). According to my Garmin, I ran the first 5 miles of the race in 6:04, 6:07, 6:05, 5:59, and 6:08. But, as often happens, my Garmin was measuring the course long, and I crossed the halfway point in exactly 31 minutes. I slowed down a bit from there, especially in miles 8-10, and finished in 1:02:43 (6:16 average). So I averaged 6:12 pace in the first half and 6:20 in the second. It's not the time I set out to run and think I can run with more LT-focused training, but it was still a PR - 6 seconds faster than I've ever run 10 miles, 19 seconds faster than I ran the same race in similar weather six weeks before setting my current marathon PR in 2015, and almost 2 minutes faster than I've covered that distance since then.

Adidas Adios, then air, then the ground

By the way, I ran the ATM in Adidas Adios, the same shoes I wear for short workouts, and the same shoes (but a later version of them) that I wore at the ATM in 2013 and 2015. I mention this because everybody is talking these days about the supposed performance advantage of the Nike Vaporfly 4% (and now the Next %). I wore Vaporflys when I ran my 1:23:45 half-marathon PR in March. According to McMillan, my new 10 mile PR converts to a 1:23:39 half marathon. So either the shoes don't make me faster (at least at those distances) or I'm in better shape now than I was in March. I think it's probably a little of both. I'm certainly in better shape now than I was in March, but I felt like I didn't run as well at the ATM as I did at the B&A half in March relative to my fitness at those times. But the shoes might help a little bit too. As I've written here before, I think the Vaporflys are best suited to the marathon, not to shorter distances. It probably depends on your running style, but I don't think they make me faster at all - in fact, I find trying to run fast in them more difficult than in proper racing flats like Adios (which are on the heavy side for racing flats). But over long distances the lightness and squish of the Zoom X foam in Vaporflys reduces fatigue and helps me avoid slowing down, as well as aiding recovery. It's possible that I could have run a little bit faster in them even over 10 miles than in Adios, but if so I don't think the difference would be very big at all. They're really just shoes, not magic, whatever the Nike marketing division would have you believe.

Some of the DC Road Runners after the Army Ten Miler

My next races will be the Veterans' Day 10k on November 10 and the Philadelphia Marathon two weeks later on November 24. I've run Philly twice before and PR'd both times, including my current PR of 2:58:56. Maybe the third time will be even more charming.  

Back on track?

In my previous post I described my DNF in Richmond last November, chalked it up to not enough marathon pace training runs, worried about my trend of stinker marathons for the past couple years, and pledged to run conservatively in my next marathon, which I identified as the Buffalo Marathon, after enjoying some Winter club races and then taking aim at non-marathon PRs.

Since then more than six months have passed, which did indeed begin with some very fun Winter club races, where I especially benefitted from competing with my friend and fellow age-grouper Shawn Zeller (whom I never managed to beat, however). Those races gave me a good base of fitness from which to target either my half marathon or ten mile PR in late March or early April. I registered for both the B&A Half Marathon on March 31 and the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler the following weekend, intending to target the first of these unless the weather or something else was off that day, in which case I could change my target to Cherry Blossom at the last minute. The training for 10 miles and the half marathon is essentially the same in any case (emphasizing lactate threshold workouts). I ended up going for it at the B&A Half Marathon and took down my old PR of 1:24:39 (6:27 pace) from 2013 by almost a minute, running 1:23:45 (6:24 pace). This was my first PR at any distance in three and a half years, since the SI-joint injury in early 2016 from which I seem never to have fully recovered. I knew that my old half marathon PR was the lowest hanging fruit among all my PRs, which is one reason why I targeted it, and had no doubt that I could beat it when in shape and in good conditions. My various chronic injuries are also such that lactate threshold workouts are the easiest for me to do, unlike faster intervals which require more recovery time and are more likely to cause acute injuries, and unlike very long runs during which I've increasingly been experiencing a lot of muscle tightness lately. Still it was very gratifying to set an all-time PR after such a long dry spell and at the age of 44 (after running regularly for 10 years). I think I can go faster still in the half marathon but will take aim first at my ten mile PR of 1:02:49 (6:17 pace), which according to McMillan is basically equivalent to my new half marathon PR anyway. Or at least I'll do so if we ever get good weather again at the Army Ten Miler in October (where I set my ten mile PR in 2013 and am registered to run again in 2019).

After the B&A Half, I turned my attention to preparing for the Buffalo Marathon on May 26. Since my goal was not to attempt to run especially fast but just to finish without completely falling apart, after my recent marathon DNFs, I did not end up emphasizing marathon pace training runs after all. I'll explain why below. But first, here are my training details for the 16 weeks leading up to the Buffalo Marathon:

February 4-10 (week 16)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 4 mile tempo averaging 6:44/mi.
We: 6 miles
Th: 16 miles @ 7:33/mi.
Fr: 4 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 6 x 4:00 (averaging 6:08/mi. pace) with 2:30 recoveries
Week total: 58 miles

February 11-17 (week 15)
Mo: off
Tu: 7 miles
We: 7 miles
Th: 5 mile tempo averaging 6:26/mi.
Fr: 7.5 miles
Sa: 20 miles @ 7:25/mi.
Su: 7.5 miles
Week total: 60 miles

February 18-24 (week 14)
Mo: off
Tu: 10 miles with 1 mile pick-up
We: 8 miles
Th: 3 x (2, 3, 4 min.) with 1, 2, 3 min. recoveries
Fr: 9 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: Club Challenge 10-miler (hilly) in 1:05:29
Week total: 57.5 miles

February 25-March 3 (week 13)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 9 miles
We: 8 miles
Th: 18 miles @ 7:23/mi.
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 7 miles
Su: Burke Lake 12k (offroad, muddy) in 48:17
Week total: 63.5 miles

March 4-10 (week 12)
Mo: 7 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park (hilly)
We: off
Th: off
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: Fort Hunt 10k in 38:59 (6:17/mi.)
Week total: 41 miles

March 11-17 (week 11)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 8 miles
We: 18 miles @ 7:28/mi.
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: off
Su: 3 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile averaging 6:22/mi.
Week total: 58 miles

March 18-24 (week 10)
Mo: 6.5 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
We: 6 miles
Th: 8 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries
Fr: 5 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 20 miles @ 7:29/mi. with Greenbelt Park near the end
Week total: 65.5 miles

March 25-31 (week 9)
Mo: off
Tu: 10 miles
We: 8 miles
Th: 10 x 500m averaging 1:50 with 1:15 rests
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: B&A Half Marathon in 1:23:45 (PR!)
Week total: 60 miles

April 1-7 (week 8)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: off
We: 9 miles
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 7 miles
Sa: off (sick)
Su: off (sick)
Week total: 28 miles

April 8-14 (week 7)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 10 miles
We: 6 miles
Th: 6 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 10 miles
Week total: 55 miles

April 15-21 (week 6)
Mo: off
Tu: 19 miles @ 7:26/mi. twice through Greenbelt Park
We: 6.5 miles
Th: 10.5 miles
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: off
Su: planned 8 x 3:00 with 2:00 recoveries (aborted after 3.5x)
Week total: 51 miles

April 22-28 (week 5)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 7 mile progression from 7:12 down to 6:34/mi.
We: 6 miles
Th: 20 miles @ 7:38/mi.
Fr: 4 miles
Sa: off
Su: Pike's Peak 10k in 38:34 (6:12/mi.)
Week total: 54 miles

April 29-May 5 (week 4)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: 7 miles
We: off
Th: 6 miles
Fr: 8 miles
Sa: 6 miles
Su: 22 miles @ 7:26/mi.
Week total: 55 miles

May 6-12 (week 3)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 6 miles
We: 2 x 3 miles (2 min. rest) averaging 6:36/mi.
Th: off
Fr: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
Sa: 6 miles
Su: off
Week total: 37.5 miles

May 13-19 (week 2)
Mo: 6 miles
Tu: off
We: 4 miles
Th: off (back freaking out)
Fr: 6 miles
Sa: 4 miles
Su: off (left foot hurting)
Week total: 20 miles

May 20-26 (week 1)
Mo: 4 miles
Tu: 10 miles in Greenbelt Park
We: off
Th: 4 miles
Fr: off
Sa: 2 miles
Su: Buffalo Marathon in 3:09:43 (7:14/mi.)
Week total: 47 miles
16 week average: 50.7 miles

I was still racing myself into shape at club races through week 12, and the B&A Half was at the end of week 9. But already in week 15 I started doing the main type of training run that I did in preparation for Buffalo: long runs in the 7:20s, in which I tried to incorporate more and more hills as I progressed (because I expected the Buffalo course to be hillier than it turned out to be). I ended up running Buffalo only slightly faster than my typical pace on these long training runs: officially 7:14 pace for 26.2 miles, although there were so many turns in the course that I believe my Garmin which tells me that I actually ran 26.56 miles at 7:08 pace. So I averaged somewhere between 10-20 seconds faster per mile than I ran on most of my long training runs, which is a difference that can easily be accounted for by advantages afforded by tapering and a race environment. Here are my mile splits:

Mile 1 - 7:08
Mile 2 - 6:46
Mile 3 - 6:47
Mile 4 - 7:05
Mile 5 - 7:03
Mile 6 - 7:01
Mile 7 - 6:54
Mile 8 - 6:59
Mile 9 - 7:04
Mile 10 - 7:02
Mile 11 - 7:02
Mile 12 - 6:46
Mile 13 - 6:53
[Halfway - 1:32:??]
Mile 14 - 6:54
Mile 15 - 7:12
Mile 16 - 6:59
Mile 17 - 6:51
Mile 18 - 7:23
Mile 19 - 7:12
Mile 20 - 7:10
Mile 21 - 7:09
Mile 22 - 7:24
Mile 23 - 7:37
Mile 24 - 7:42
Mile 25 - 7:56
Mile 26 - 7:26
Finish - 3:09:43

My average pace through 21 miles was 7:00-01. I slowed down the last 5 miles but didn't completely fall apart. Before then I found myself running a bit faster than I had expected but went with it because I felt good and my heart rate stayed below 160 until halfway, after which it hovered just over 160 until mile 18, and it never hit 170. My pace fluctuations before mile 22 correspond mainly with undulations in the course, although in the upper teens I hit a low point when the course went through an area with little tree coverage and the sun was bearing down on us. But I soon rallied when a clever volunteer shouted that I was probably second master, and then he repeated probably, which in my marathon haze I believed but which turned out to be completely false. (I finished 55th overall and 8th in the male 40-44 group, with four more older men ahead of me). That stirred enough competitive juices to keep my head in the game until mile 22, when just putting one foot in front of the other became difficult. There were enough people around me suffering more than I was, however, that I was able to stay motivated to pick off as many people as possible before the finish line. I don't recall anyone passing me during almost the entire race, after the first 10k or so.

The day before the race, I told my wife that I predicted a 3:10 finish and pretty much nailed it. Although this is not historically a fast time for me, it's (barely) the fastest I've run since my 2:58 PR in 2015 and the ensuing string of injuries (I also ran 3:10:57 at Chicago in 2017). It's what I needed after my DNF in Richmond and other recent stinker marathons in order to give me some confidence again that I can handle this distance. So I'm quite happy with this result.

I think my training was appropriate for this sort of goal, because I basically just needed to coax my body into tolerating a moderate pace for longer and longer distances, over increasingly hilly terrain, up to some point just a bit short of the marathon distance. This is how first time marathoners train. The speed work is sprinkled in mainly just to make your normal training pace feel easy and to increase efficiency. Otherwise, it's all about the long run, which gradually increases in length and either (for first timers, surprisingly) pace or (for me) hilliness. I needed to do that sort of training in order to get back to a baseline, which apparently is roughly 3:09-10 marathon shape for me, from which I can now hope to progress (again) toward more advanced marathon training.

I stand by the main point of my previous entry after my DNF in Richmond: the key element of advanced marathon training is marathon pace running. After running a half marathon at 6:24 pace at the end of March, which pegs my lactate threshold around 6:20 or so, my true marathon pace should have been in the 6:40s, assuming I was properly trained for the marathon. The right way to train for a marathon that optimized my abilities at that point would have been to throw in blocks of push miles in the 6:40s during every long run, especially towards the end, and occasionally to replace midweek speed or tempo workouts with something like 2 x 4 miles or 3 x 3 miles in the 6:40s. I've done this in the past, but my plan for Buffalo was not to attempt to run that fast. Physiologically, there didn't seem to be much point to replacing tempo workouts with runs at 7:00 or 7:10 pace, since that would not have been much of a workout for me. It would have made sense to throw in blocks of push miles around 7:00 or 7:10 during long runs, and sometimes I did manage to do this. But, again, I've been struggling lately with muscle tightness during the latter part of long runs, which often prevented me from accelerating to the pace that (somehow) I actually ran in Buffalo. Evidently this didn't matter as far as my preparations for Buffalo were concerned. But going forward, I'm going to need to solve this muscle tightness problem if I want to get back to more advanced marathon training and to targeting a marathon time under 3:00 again.

At the end of my previous post, I mentioned that I intended to make a point of regularly doing exercises to strengthen my right glute medius, which two PTs had suggested was the focal point of my recent injuries and muscle imbalances. To this end, for the past six months or so I have done the following supplementary exercises 2-3 times per week in the evenings: front and side planks, clam shells (with resistance band), lying side leg raises (weighted), single leg squats, and standing hip abduction (with resistance band). Sometimes I threw in a few upper body exercises as well, and I always did some stretching afterwards. I realize that muscle building and strengthening takes time, and that there's going to be a period of adaptation during which the muscles you're trying to strengthen actually feel worse because of the increased stress of the supplementary exercises on top of regular training. Nevertheless, after six months I think it's safe to say that the verdict is now in: strengthening my right glute medius did not solve the problem, which means that a weak right glute medius was not the (primary) problem. On May 13, during my (steeper than intended) taper for Buffalo, I visited yet another PT who suggested a different explanation for the muscle tightness I've been experiencing in my right hip. He suggested that it may stem from a bulging disc or two in my lower back and suggested that I get an MRI, which I've never had. To be honest, I've always suspected this, so I made an (upcoming) appointment with my primary physician at which I will try to persuade him to give me a referral for an MRI. This PT also gave me a new regime of lower back and (especially) abdominal exercises to do every day on the suspicion that I have a minor disc problem in my lower back. I started trying to do these exercises after my May 13 appointment but immediately realized that I couldn't handle them yet. So I set them aside until after Buffalo and have now just begun doing part every other day of what this PT says I should be doing every day. So I expect a period of adjustment to these new supplementary exercises, which should at least partially coincide with my recovery from Buffalo anyway. We'll see whether, after a period of adjustment, this new supplementary exercise regime helps address my right hip muscle tightness problem.

As for the future, there's not much to do in the summer running-wise besides working on speed and turnover. I mean, you can't run fast for very long in the heat and humidity. I realize that there are many physiological benefits to running moderately far and slowly in the heat, and to doing some limited tempo work in warm weather as well. But, really, where's the pleasure in that? You need to do it, and it'll pay off in the Fall. But the fun in summer running comes from running fast over short distances. This is something I have done little of recently. As I mentioned, fast interval workouts require a lot of recovery time for me these days, so I don't do them very often. As a result, I can't run faster than 5:50 or so pace over any distance to save my life, which means in a 5k (the shortest race distance I've ever run) I'm basically running flat out the whole time. I hope to get some better speed back this summer by patiently prioritizing speed workouts and the supplementary workouts I mentioned earlier. I'll do some short club races over the next couple of months to orient me in this direction.

After that, I'll spend less time in Greece this summer than usual, and I've registered for two ten milers in late Summer and early Fall: the hilly Annapolis Ten Miler on August 25, and the Army Ten Miler on October 13. Ten mile races are excellent targets because your ten mile race pace is basically your lactate threshold, and long distance running in basically about lowering your lactate threshold. So by signing up for these races I'm not really committing myself to anything other than trying to get better at long distance running in general. And to be honest I'm kind of on the fence about what to do in the Fall. I'd love to target a 2:5x marathon again, but I don't know whether my body can handle the training I'd need to do to seriously pursue that goal. Maybe this new regime of supplementary exercises will work and I'll be able to get back on track with harder workouts and higher mileage. Or maybe I'm just grasping at straws and getting too old for this crap. Again, we'll find out. I'm not much interested in running another 3:09 marathon, though. So either I need to be convinced that my body can handle the training for another sub-3 marathon in the Fall, or I'm going to focus instead on the 10k through half marathon, not only because my PRs for those distances are still just barely in range, but also because frankly I'm just better at those distances and training for them hurts me less. I love the marathon and will pursue it for as long as I have any hope of success, but for me success in the marathon begins with a 2. Can I ever run that fast again?